Renae Fieck (00:00.954)
girl, I am back. my my goodness, girl. my good my goodness, I am back. I have actually been, I don't know if you've realized how long it's been since I've recorded a podcast. I was on the fence as to whether or not I was actually gonna come back to podcasting. Strangely, this week that I've had this head cold, I have had such an urge.
And surge of things that I wanted to tell you, and I feel like I can't share it in the short form content that's available on social media. And I was like, what am I doing? Why am I not recording my podcast again? And so here we are, nasal congestion and all, because it just will not go away. It's been over a week now that I'm like congested and a snot bucket rocket all the time, but I'm not gonna let it stop me.
Because I am feeling the fire deep within my soul and within my body, and I want to be able to share with you what that is. Like why I haven't had the podcast. It's been, I think, since June. I think June was the last or May, somewhere right around there was the last podcast I recorded. It is now November. So it's been at least five or six months that I have not recorded.
I know at the end of that I was like, hey, I'm just going on summer break because that's what I do. I take summer breaks and I take December breaks and I take these breaks in my life because I am building a business that fits my life, not the other way around. And so I took this hiatus and then didn't feel like coming back. And a big part of that was because of this bracelet. If you saw on my social media recently, I posted about the one bracelet that almost broke me.
And that is what this episode is about. It's about the moldavite bracelet that my friend recommended back in March. And I naively put it on without understanding really the power behind moldavite. So if you don't what know about moldavite, I don't know a whole lot, so you can go Google too. But moldavite is thought to be remnants of a meteor that has hit Earth. And so the people that wear it or talk about it that know a lot about moldavite.
Renae Fieck (02:23.732)
Talk about it's incredibly powerful to create rapid transformation. So, meanwhile, hey, this girl over here, I'm a quick fire, I'm a quick starter, I'm a person who's like, take me in and transform and give me all of the things. And yet we sometimes forget that those transformations are freaking messy. We think of the transformation, we just think of the glow-up part, right? We think of the person who is
you know, struggling and they're having a hard time and they don't have the money or like life is awful, blah, blah, blah. And then the transformation is the glow-up. It's the you have the money, you have the business, you have the body, you have the marriage, the love. Like you think of that as the transformation. But we oftentimes don't talk about the middle. We don't talk about the messy part that is the actual transformation. The part like when we think of a butterfly that goes into its chrysalis, it literally melts.
Like the caterpillar transforms by melting into nothing and then transforming into this beautiful butterfly. So, you know, we see the caterpillar and then we see the transformation on the other side, but we don't ever really talk about the melting down and the melting apart in the inside. And I think when I put on that moldavite bracelet, I was expecting the butterfly moment and was not expecting the melting down.
And this last year has done that for me. I know you guys have been around if you've been around for a while, you've heard my stories of, you know, having a really rough year a couple years ago when I was diagnosed with melanoma and I walked away from working with James Wedmore, which was like a whole big transformation process of that self and just like everything that's really been happening. Like I would say if I were to put my last couple years in a bucket, I would say it's been a lot of rapid trans transformation.
But that rapid transformation is the mussy middle. It's not the fun stuff. I'm like, we haven't quite got to the fun stuff yet. Like I'm still waiting for the fun stuff. But this year, wearing that moldavite bracelet really things took up took it up a notch. So for the backstory, I have been working, my dream job was always to work in the NICU. When I became an occupational therapist, you know, like 15, 16 years ago, that was my goal.
Renae Fieck (04:52.407)
So, you know, even before that when I was in school or when I was working as an OT assistant or like an aide years and years ago, like all along I've always had this dream and this vision to be in the NICU. And so I have been very strategic about that. I have taken courses, I have done prerequisites, I've done, I've like, you know, created relationships with people. I like really was very strategic in
Creating an opportunity for me to be in the NICU someday. So I did. I made it into the NICU about eight years ago, and I have loved it. Like I love doing what I do for women. I love helping them feel this permission to really go after their goals, to go after their dreams, to trust their bodies, to trust their menstrual cycles, to like live these unapologetic lives the way they want to. And I
Absolutely love that. Like that does feel like this is a part of my soul's purpose. But there's something so sacred about being in the NICU. And I had always held this like straddle of like being the neonatal therapist and also being the coach. And I I would probably say I identified more as the neonatal therapist. I don't know. There was just something about maybe the education, the journey, all the things. Like I really just identified as this therapist.
And I only worked par per diem. So I shared kind of a d the job with another coworker. She worked part-time, I worked per diem, and we just made made it work. Like we covered the NICU so that if one of us was gone, the other one was there, we worked really well together. But she was retiring. And so in that process of her retiring, the hospital hired another person to come on and to be able to take her place.
I naively went into it thinking it's gonna be the same sort of situation where she's gonna work the days that I'm not there and then I'll work the days she's not there and we're just gonna have the same sort of flow that we've had. And one, I will set the stage like it didn't go that way. So, like from the very beginning, there was some mismanagement with leadership in the expectations and the roles that we were gonna play. And then over
Renae Fieck (07:15.586)
The next couple of months, it became that this coworker did not like me and was continually going to my manager complaining about me. And I tried my best, right? Like I tried to, you know, change the way I was interacting or change the way I was communicating, or I tried to include her. I I like I tried to make this a team because I knew we were gonna be a team.
And it just continued to escalate and continued to escalate until we got to right around that time that I started wearing that moldavite bracelet. It was like that I would say maybe reverse that. I was it wasn't really escalating until I started wearing that moldavite bracelet. Like things were a little bit tense, but not really crazy. Once I put that moldavite bracelet on, it was within a month of that that really all things came to a head. And
I had a meeting with HR, I had a meeting with my boss, I had all these meetings and really was hoping for some bit of resolution that did not come. And so be the resolution that they came up with was basically to remove me from the NICU and let this other person take the full-time position in the NICU. And so rather than us sharing it how we had been doing for
roughly the last 10 years. Well, it would probably even be more than that because it wasn't me. I I took somebody else's place. And so the place that I took, that was the role the person had before was that they were job sharing like that too. So it's like it's been this long standing thing of like two people kind of holding this position. And I was basically removed from the NICU. And so as an occupational therapist at the facility I was at, they were basically going to put me back into working with adults.
I love adults. I love little old people. I love learning their stories, but it is not my passion and is not why I continued to work as an OT. Like I would much rather be here and serving you and giving my whole heart to you than working with older elderly people. And so I had kind of a nervous breakdown, like a mental health breakdown, and was having a lot of physical symptoms with it. I was not managing my
Renae Fieck (09:37.084)
nervous system at all very well through this. Like I was trying I my darndest. Like I was using a lot of my hacks. I was using a lot of my tools. It was just so like my identity was being rocked. I was being attacked on my integrity. I was being attacked in my character. I was being attacked for who I was and it really was leaving me having a really hard time. And so I ended up
going on a mental health break and stepping away from the NACU and was off for most of the summer actually, which was beautiful. It was really nice for me to be able to be home with the kids and to have that space and to just get away. And then when I went back in August, decided it was not where I wanted to be. Like I again was not coming to work to be able to work with adults. Like I was coming to work to be able to work with babies. Like babies were my passion. And
In this whole process, like I said, it's like it was stripping away this identity that I've held as a neonatal therapist for the last eight something years. It was like something I it was so I was proud of. I had earned, I had worked for, I had like achieved this like massive goal. And yet it had been stripped away from me and been like taken from me in a way. And there was a lot of hurt, there was a lot of struggle. I I think that was part of the mental.
Breakdown that I kind of had. And I really dug into like you know, my somatics, and I actually started using some different medicinal per things that my doctor gave me. And I started dabbling with some different microdosing, and I was using a lot of things to be able to just like bring my nervous system back into play. And
What it really came down to was recognizing and honoring that I was in that messy middle and that I needed to walk away. And so I resigned. And as I resigned, it wasn't a smooth resignation. Let's just put it there. I've signed a pretty hefty confidentiality statement, so I can't share further details about the whole thing. But it wasn't smooth.
Renae Fieck (11:55.034)
It wasn't easy. And so it like continued to challenge me and test me and like get me into this place of releasing and letting go and like being able to receive. Like, I'll I'll probably share more about that experience that I really had in like hiring a lawyer and like what that did for me in being able to receive. And now here we are on the other side of it. But I in that process was like,
thrown through a loop, right? And started noticing myself grasping at everything and like like holding on to this identity and holding on to the income and holding on to all these different things. And so in that process, like I started another company. I started a another baby therapy company, which I do love. Like I love keeping my foot in the door with these like babies. Like it's a it's challenging my mind, it's challenging me in a whole different way. And
the skills and the tools that I have for my coaching are helping me with these brand new moms that are having babies that have some sort of developmental delay or some sort of special need. And they're brand new babies, right? Like they're under a year old and they're navigating all of this these things. And so it's been really beautiful for me to be able to support not just the baby, but the mom in those. And also, you know, creating this little bit of just a shift in my mind. But
I'll admit it, like this last, you know, six months has been a a whirlwind. And it's only been in probably the last month or two that I actually allowed myself to really lean into the grief. I think that is the biggest thing in this whole messy middle. And like any transition that you're going through or anything that we are navigating, when we look at these rapid transformations, what happens is that.
Are oftentimes we're letting go of beliefs, we're letting go of stories, we're letting go of grief identities, like we're letting go of huge things a part of us. And as we do that, like as I shed off this identity of a neonatal therapist, I had to let myself lean into that. Like I had to lean into the melting, right? Like there's no amount of going through this transformation.
Renae Fieck (14:16.814)
That I could have gotten through it faster if if I had tried, right? Like I had to actually allow myself to lean into the discomfort, the anxiety, the grief, the like the emotions, like all of the things that were coming up for me because they were all happening for me. And I think that's what we sometimes forget, right? Like when we're going through these rapid transformations, is like there's a lot happening.
And a lot of things shifting. And what mo most of us feel like we need to do is just kind of like shove it down and forget about it. And even the best of us, like even some of the people in the world with the best of tools, I'll say I'm pretty, I feel like I'm pretty really well managed with my tools. But it's like sometimes we reach that breaking point and it's like we need to reach for that outsourced source and we need to just let ourselves be in the messy middle. It's like the winters.
Right. We sometimes need to let ourselves just be in a winter. Like we don't have to feel like we're in the transformation part of us all of the time. Like, that's not the beautiful part. The beautiful part is what comes on the outside of that messy melting down middle. And so I wanted to record this episode. It's kind of weird. It's my first one eyed out of the gate. And just share, like those were the things, like the kind of like the four things that really helped me walk through this was
This belief in my head of this is all working out for me. It sucks. And I hate this whole process. Like I don't love this. But it's happening for me. There is something good coming out on the other end of this. And I'll say, even recently, another coworker of mine was like, dude, you would have never left the NICU unless it got so bad that you were forced out. And that's what God did for you.
Because where you're moving now is where you're really meant to be. And I I I understand that, right? So like sometimes we forget that too. It's like we think that the hardest things that are happening in our lives are these like horrible things, but sometimes it's like I would have had my grip on that NICU so tight and so hard that I never would have let go. And I would have never experienced what's happening in my life now. And the beauty that's coming out of it. Like I never would have experienced that.
Renae Fieck (16:35.699)
butterfly moment because I would have been gripping so hard onto the past or what was. And so sometimes we're like forced, God kicks us out of the nest on our own to do the things that we're sometimes unwilling to do ourselves. And so in that season, like that belief and that knowing even as hard as things were, that this was all working out for me. Like I knew that on the other side of it it was going to be exactly what it was meant to be.
The other thing that really helped me moving through this was like, like I said, honoring the grief, honoring the emotions, honoring the feelings as they came up. Like letting them be okay. Like letting myself actually experience them, letting myself actually be with them and not trying to fix them. Like I think that was probably the biggest thing that went through this whole thing, other than like when my blood pressure was like sky high and I went to the doctor, I was like, my I need to fix this. Like, we need to fix this. But
Other than that, it was like, I don't need to fix these feelings. I just need to feel them. I need to be with them. The other thing, third thing, I was like, I'm gonna share four things that like really helped me. I would say the third thing was support. We sometimes forget about the support systems that we have. And I really needed support during this whole season, this whole process. My husband was working out of state. And so I was really navigating it all on my own, other than like I could talk to him, right?
But like managing life with the kids and taking them to practices and doing all the things, I was doing it all on my own with all of this happening. And so that was even an added piece to this whole thing that like didn't get into it, but I had to lean on the supports of the people around me. I had to let myself break down. I had to let myself say, I can't do this all on my own.
You we don't have to, right? When we're in those places of like having a really rough go, we're in a transition, we're whatever, like let yourself fall apart and let the people around you catch you. And if you don't have those people, my love, like please let me know. Like let's let's find you those people. Like I will be those people for you. Maybe not physically, but I can be the support for you.
Renae Fieck (18:55.119)
In those seasons, because like we really do need our people. I mean, that's like one of the biggest reasons like I've created the flow collective is like women need more women. Like women need to be in the room with other women. And like my mission this year in my business is like getting more women in the room with other women. So, you know, I'm hosting live events with getting more women in the room. I'm hosting my retreat with getting more women in the room. And then the flow collective, getting more women in the room. Like I think this has become my sole purpose, is like getting more women in the room with other women.
Like, we need to be relying on each other. And then the fourth thing What was my fourth thing? I kinda lost my my train of thought. I lost what that fourth thing was gonna be.
Yeah. What was the fourth thing that I really
I I mean, I don't remember what it was off the top of my head, but I will say, like, in all of this, I had to be okay with letting my business sit. There was almost the entire month of August. I don't think I posted on social media hardly at all. I don't think I really showed up for my business much of all. I really had to allow myself to say this is not the season for rapid growth and rapid expansion. This is a season that I need to replenish me.
And I think just that awareness of like the cycles and the seasons and the rhythms of like how the earth functions really gave me the permission to do that. It's a big thing that I am on a mission to really help women earn and or learn and an honor is that we are these cyclical, rhythmical beings, not just with our menstrual cycles, but within the laws of the universe and within nature and things like that. And so I think that probably was a big one was like not guilting myself about.
Renae Fieck (20:45.047)
Letting business sit for a little bit and like like not seeing rapid growth all the time and just knowing this was a season of winter. This was a season of me turning inward and doing the work that I needed on me so that then I could grow and expand and support and show up and do all of the amazing, wonderful things that I want to do for you. So welcome back. I've got another juicy episode coming. We'll see if I record it while I'm still a little bit congested here, but
Here we are. We're back. I'm so happy to be here and so excited to be sharing this with you. If you haven't registered, I do have or haven't seen, I have a workshop coming up on November 19th. I'm gonna share about these cycles and seasons and rhythms and like how do we really plan for them? Like, how do we you know, obviously putting on a multi bite racist, we might not know what we're gonna expect, but when we look at and forecast out, like what are the seasons we could anticipate? Like how do we
really focus in on the goals that are gonna move the needle. Like most people are focusing on goals that don't match the season of life and business that they're in. And then they just burn themselves out and they feel frustrated and they wonder why it's not working or wondering why they're pushing so hard and nothing's clicking. And so we'll dive into that, like what goal that you really need to be setting this next year that's gonna domino everything else and how you actually work with the seasons, with your menstrual cycle, with all those things. So we're working less, getting more done.
Creating this like much more aligned way of building a business, like a really truly intuitive feminine way of building business. So if you haven't registered for that, go over to renewfic.com forward slash 2027 plan. I will see you in there. And I'm so happy to be back. I'm so happy to be here with you. I would love to know how this episode landed for you. So come find me on Instagram and let me know. And I'll see you in the next one.
